Two Wins, Many Votes To Go

Today the Senate Finance Committee voted down both 'government options' which is a main bone of contention in one of the most favored bills by the Left for Universal Healthcare insurance. Here is a list of oh-so-biased media reports of this day's debates and votes.

Senate Finance Committee Rejects Public Option Proposal in Health Care Bill by JONATHAN KARL and Z. BYRON WOLF. ABCNews

Senate Finance Committee Rejects Both Public Option Amendments by William Branigin. Washington Post

Senate panel rejects health ‘public option’ by AP. MSNBC

Now for the 'fair and balanced' news.

Senate Finance Committee Votes Against Government-Run Health Insurance Plan by Fox News.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have done remarkable work. I am very proud of all of you. However this is not the time to relax. Sen. Baucus is determined to pass his bill (number?) through with only one Republican vote. This they call bipartisanship? NO! We must applaud those who voted against this monstrocity and demand confessions from those who voted for it.

In setback for Obama, Senate panel rejects government-run insurance plan by DAVID LIGHTMAN
McClatchy Newspapers. Miami Herald

"Two efforts to adopt a public plan lost, one by 15 to 8, the other by 13 to 10. Three Democrats - Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Kent Conrad of North Dakota - voted against both proposals.

Sens. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Tom Carper, D-Del., backed a public plan that could negotiate rates with doctors, hospitals and other health providers, while opposing an alternative that would have tied the plan's rates to those paid by Medicare for two years." [Read whole article.]

Thank you for all the hard work you have done so far. You are all awesome! God bless.

'Disinformation' From Senate Majority Leader

Yesterday I made a phone call to Senator Harry Reid's office to find the Senate Bill (SB) number for Senator Baucus' bill that came out of the Finance Committee. Not too difficult a task, or so I thought. I was given two bill numbers, both dated February 2008!

The bill numbers I was given are SB 1699 and S 1647. I was so excited that I was able to contribute something to the cause that I called Dawn and told her about it. How embarrassing it was to have to call her back after hours on the search for a bill using the Thomas guide and coming up short.

I was very polite on this phone call. You could have sworn that I was on their side. I simply asked if they were going to allow us the 72 hours to view the bill before they voted on it like it had been promised. I did not use anyone's name in particular, because I did not want to put anyone on the defensive. I do not operate like that.

I just wanted the information. Well, no luck. As I mentioned, I searched the whole guide and could not find it. I tried 'Baucus', 'health care', 'health insurance', 'finance committee', and of course the bills themselves. There are too many bills, and boy did I find some doozies, for just one person to handle. I tried my best, but my best wasn't good enough.

According to this email I received from NewsMax today, they have no intention of allowing us any time to read this bill. NewsMax claims the bill hasn't even been written, however I believe it has been written so we disagree on this point. Otherwise, here is the email:

Senators are negotiating on Senator Max Baucus' ObamaCare 6.0 proposal and it hasn't even been written yet.

Of course, to state the obvious, the fact that they're negotiating on something that hasn't been written means no one has read it yet either.

And, to add even more insult to injury, it’s now clear they have no intention of letting you read it.

You read that right. On an almost straight party-line vote, Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee squashed an amendment by Senator Jim Bunning that would have required Baucus’ ObamaCare bill to be posted on the Internet – for all Americans to read – for 72 hours prior to the Committee voting on it.

Not only that. Bunning’s amendment also called for requiring the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s official tally of how much Baucus’ ObamaCare 6.0 will cost the American people and what the real impact will be on health costs to be released before the it was voted on.

It's as plain as the nose on your face.

They're leaving the door wide-open to pass Baucus' ObamaCare 6.0 proposal in the dead of night... under the cover of darkness… without even telling you and other concerned Americans what it will cost and how it will affect your health care.

But what really takes the cake is that even after those shenanigans, some Senate Republicans are still going out of their way to play Let’s-Make-A-Deal on Senator Max Baucus’ ObamaCare 6.0 socialized health care scheme.

They're actually fighting tooth-and-nail, not to stop ObamaCare but to negotiate a so-called compromise on this Obama-Baucus scheme to socialize the nation’s health care system.

And that's just one more reason why we must tell our elected officials, right here and right now, that the American people don't want any more negotiations or deals or compromises.

We want ObamaCare off the table and we want it off the table now.

Please keep in mind that I seldom use NewsMax as a reference, but sometimes they get it somewhat correct. Read it with a grain of skeptism, however.

I truly wish I had better news for you. Monday I am going to try better than my best to get that SB number. The reason I believe there is a number is because you cannot move a bill through the process without one. Let's slow down enough to be reasonable. ;)

Have a great weekend! God bless.

PS. I would have prefered to give you the link to NewsMax, but my computer doesn't seem to want to let me go there. Hmm.

Update: Indeed, I can always count on John Fund of the Wall Street Journal's openion section to fill in the gaps:

So it appears Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress have decided to ram a bill through as quickly as possible. On Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee voted 12 to 11 to reject a proposal to require a 72-hour waiting period and a full scoring of the bill by the Congressional Budget Office before the committee casts any final vote. Only one Democrat, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, voted for the waiting period. Chairman Max Baucus said the idea would delay a vote on the final bill for two weeks and he didn't want to waste another moment. [Continue reading Congress Needs a 72-Hour Waiting Period.]

I trust his facts. It gets worse for we the people as you read. We must hit those phones first thing in the morning! Have a nice day.